A memecoin experienced a drastic drop after Vitalik Buterin sold his entire airdrop of 17 billion Neiro. However, surprisingly, it quickly bounced back, recording explosive growth.
Let’s see all the details below.
Vitalik Buterin sells his 17 billion Neiro airdrop: the effect on the memecoin
As anticipated, a memecoin that tried to attract attention by leveraging the notoriety of Vitalik Buterin saw its value increase by 200%, despite Buterin selling the entire airdrop.
On August 4th, this unknown token tried to gain credibility by donating 4% of its supply to the co-founder of Ethereum, declaring that he was the largest holder.
However, after just one hour, Buterin sold his entire supply of Neiro, exchanging 17.1 billion NEIRO for 44.5 Ether (ETH), equivalent to approximately $103,000 at the time of the transaction. Buterin’s move initially caused a drop in the token of about 60%.
Surprisingly, according to DexScreener, the Neiro token on ETH (NEIRO) has risen by over 200%, reaching an all-time high of $0.000038 on August 5.
In the meantime, the official Neiro account on Ethereum commented on X as follows:
“Hey VitalikButerin, we see that you sold your $Neiro bag. Our humble request is that you donate part of the proceeds to a shelter for stray dogs. And thank you for building our playground!”
The current situation of memecoins and the related risks
Currently, four different NEIRO tokens are listed on CoinGecko, at least six variants on Uniswap, and numerous potentially fraudulent accounts related to Neiro on X.
Furthermore, the developer of a version of Neiro based on Solana earned 2.85 million dollars in an alleged rug pull.
At the end of July, the independent blockchain investigator “Wazz” publicly warned that “the largest Neiro token on Ethereum is a honeypot”.
In the meantime, the memecoins have taken a hard hit in the market, with the total capitalization of meme tokens down by about 16% in the last 24 hours to 35.8 billion dollars.
The biggest losers were Pepe, Dogwifhat (WIF), Floki (FLOKI) and Book of Meme (BOME), which all lost between 18% and 20% in the last 24 hours as of August 5th.
Vitalik Buterin outlines the ten-year future of Ethereum
The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, recently spoke about the decade-long future of the platform and the expectations for the blockchain sector in general.
During his speech at EDCON2024, Buterin highlighted how Ethereum will continue to focus on the development of decentralized applications (dApp).
He highlighted the current successes in key areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi), the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO). Additionally, he emphasized the ongoing relevance of non-fungible tokens (NFT) in the ecosystem.
Buterin also mentioned fundamental projects such as Polymarket, a betting platform oriented towards DeFi, Firefly, a social media entity, Daimo, a cryptocurrency wallet, and Rarimo, a voting tool.
These projects, according to Buterin, will play a crucial role in the future developments of Ethereum, demonstrating the transformative potential of blockchain technology through innovative and practical applications.
These initiatives not only represent the technological evolution of Ethereum, but also promise to revolutionize various sectors through advanced decentralized solutions.